A graphical processing environment typically comprises multiple graphics applications each specifying graphics for an area of the display, referred to as a window. The graphics application defines graphics objects, and operations to perform on those objects. For example, a graphics application may specify lines, ellipses, and rectangles, and the size, color, fill, opacity, luminosity, etc. of surfaces of those objects. A graphics object description may include, among other things, a collection of vertices and the edges formed by those vertices. Graphics operations may include, among other things scaling, rotation, deformation, and surfacing attributes of graphics objects.
At the time a graphics application is initiated (e.g. loaded and executed by the operating environment), the graphics application may provide a set of graphic object descriptions and operations to a graphic system device driver. The object descriptions and operations may be provided to the driver using application program interfaces, resulting in substantial bus and processor utilization. The object descriptions and operation descriptions are duplicated in both application and driver program address space, resulting in inefficient memory utilization.